We have several PDM workflows that are being held up by single approvers. Our admin is not aware of any way to check the workflow to see which approver is holding it up. Is there any way to for the system admin to see what approval is holding up the workflow?

Having the signatures pop up on the card is a quick visual way of determining who has approved and who has not for documents that need multiple approvers. You should also be able to just review the history and see who has approved it as well.

Yes, we can view this history and see who has approved. But we CANNOT see who HASN'T approved, and therein is the problem, because our workflows allow for adding additional approvers depending on the type of workflow. For example, if the workflow is an ECN that affects a purchased part, we can select a purchasing agent to be an additional approver. However, if whoever submitted the workflow to begin with can't remember what (if any) additional approvers he selected, then we have no way of knowing who is holding up the workflow.

I should note that I'm sure we can customize pdm to show this sort of stuff in the data card or in a custom search, etc.... but what we are looking for is some sort of built in feature or procedure in which the Admin (at the very least) can go into pdm or the sql database and figure out who is holding up the workflow right now, today.

Ah, I thought you just had a static set of approvers. This sounds like the problem I had with multiple choices of checkers of drawings. What I did was put a drop down on the card indicating who was to check it. Then they transitioned it selecting the notification that they put on the card. It is an extra step and probably could be programmed but I didn't bother trying to do that. Their name shows up on the card and it is searchable so people can do a quick search to see if people are waiting for them to approve something.

Yes, we can view this history and see who has approved. But we CANNOT see who HASN'T approved, and therein is the problem, because our workflows allow for adding additional approvers depending on the type of workflow. For example, if the workflow is an ECN that affects a purchased part, we can select a purchasing agent to be an additional approver. However, if whoever submitted the workflow to begin with can't remember what (if any) additional approvers he selected, then we have no way of knowing who is holding up the workflow.

Purchasing? QC? A specific plant manager? Process engineer? etc?

How do you select an additional approver? Is there some sort of custom form that pops up or are you talking about a dynamic notification where you add some particular individual to be notified that a file has entered a particular state? Is the problem that the file has entered some state, such as 'Awaiting Purchasing Approval' but you cannot determine the particular individual that was notified that their approval was needed?

[quote]...are you talking about a dynamic notification where you add some particular individual to be notified that a file has entered a particular state? Is the problem that the file has entered some state, such as 'Awaiting Purchasing Approval' but you cannot determine the particular individual that was notified that their approval was needed?[/quote]

edit: how on earth do you quote somebody on this forum? That is supposed to be a quote from Jim Sculley's post.

If you are using the internal database messaging (and not SMTP messaging) you can see the notifications that have been sent as long as they haven't been deleted by the user. They are in the Messages table. If you know the document name, you can search the Message column for any notification associated with that document and go from there. If the user deletes the message, you are out of luck.

If you have to do this all the time, you have a people problem that needs to be addressed.